L.A. Gay Men Reduce Unsafe Sex Practices, Survey Finds

Fewer homosexual and bisexual men in Los Angeles County are now engaging in unsafe sexual practices, evidently in response to widespread publicity about the spread of AIDS, according to a new poll, but Los Angeles’ gays apparently still lag behind those in San Francisco in AIDS precautions.

Although the results are encouraging, Larry Bye, who directed the survey for San Francisco-based Communications Technologies, said gay men in Los Angeles still engage in unsafe sexual practices more frequently than gays in San Francisco.

“It’s fair to say that the reported incidence of unsafe sexual behavior is higher in Los Angeles than in our April, 1985, survey of San Francisco’s gay community,” Bye said.

Surveys nationwide have shown changing patterns in homosexual relationships during the course of the AIDS epidemic, but the poll released Thursday was the first to document the trend in Los Angeles.

“What’s happening in both cities,” Bye said, “is that the AIDS epidemic has unleashed an enormous change in people’s sexual habits and life styles.”

Based on a sampling of 400 Los Angeles-area men, the survey concluded that 17% of gay men in Los Angeles still engage in unsafe sexual practices outside of a primary relationship.

Exchange of Fluids

Unsafe sexual practices are considered those in which bodily fluids, primarily blood, urine and semen, are likely to be exchanged. The survey found that oral and anal intercourse with exchanges of fluid were the most common unsafe sexual practices still occurring with regularity.

Sixty-two percent of the men questioned in the random telephone poll conducted in January and February said they now engage in sex with many different partners less often than they did before developing a fear of contracting acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Thirty percent of the respondents who admitted to being gay or bisexual said they never had multiple sex partners.

The survey, which has a margin of error of nearly 5%, was conducted using probability sample techniques, Bye said. Surveyors used phone numbers taken from census tracts primarily along the heavily gay “Santa Monica (Boulevard) corridor” in West Hollywood and into the Silver Lake area, Bye said. In those areas, he said, the survey’s callers had a higher than average likelihood of reaching gay or bisexual men.

The survey figures show that while 66% feel threatened by AIDS, 98% believe that adopting safe sex procedures will lower the likelihood of contracting the disease. And 78% of the respondents said they feel that safe sex can be satisfying.

Among the other changes noted in the Los Angeles poll, 25% of the men who responded that they engage in anal intercourse said they now use a condom more often than before. Moreover, of those who had previously engaged in oral sex with an exchange of fluid, 69% said they do so less often now.

John Mortimer, director of the Southern California Cooperative AIDS Risk-Reduction Education Service, which sponsored the poll along with AIDS Project Los Angeles, said the poll results show that the Los Angeles gay community is changing its behavior in response to public education on the deadly disease, but that the task will not be over until AIDS is wiped out.

“They’re coming along,” Mortimer said of Los Angeles’ AIDS educational programs. “Of course, more needs to be done. This is no time to let up on our educational efforts.”

Urges Comparison

Mortimer urged a comparison of the gay community’s reaction to the AIDS threat with the general population’s reaction to other life-threatening practices, such as smoking, to note how far AIDS education programs have gone in just a few years.

Bye offered several explanations as to why sexual practices seem to be changing more slowly in Los Angeles than in San Francisco. He pointed out that education programs got under way later here; the San Francisco gay community is more geographically concentrated and cohesive, and San Francisco AIDS organizations have been in existence longer than their counterparts to the south and thus have been better financed.

Bye said the poll results would be used in developing future educational programs in the county. Communications Technologies already has conducted two similar studies in San Francisco and is planning a third for next month.

According to the Los Angeles County Health Department, there have been a total of 1,468 reported AIDS cases in the county through the end of January, and the number of cases continued to rise at an expanding rate. November brought 56 additional cases; December showed 68 new reports, and 85 cases were reported in January.